What do people do online?
Using data donation to understand digital behavior.

a workshop at the SPP Junior Researcher Meeting

Frieder Rodewald

University of Mannheim & Institute for Employment Research

October 22, 2025

2️⃣ What is data donation?

The participant’s perspective.

🤔 Please raise your hand ✋

(Before a week ago…) Who has ever tried to request their data from an online platform?

What are data donation studies?

💡 Definition: Data donation studies are a user-centric method for collecting digital traces:

  • Users have the right to request, access, and download data that platforms collect about them.
  • They can make their data download packages (DDPs) available to science, often in the context of web surveys.
  • Researchers use CSS methods to filter, anonymize, and aggregate this data locally on participants’ devices.
  • Participants can inspect/delete their data before any data is transferred.

Which types of data do DDPs contain?

For platforms like YouTube, Instagram, or LinkedIn, for example… (Hase et al. 2024)

  • User profiles (e.g., privacy settings)
  • Activities (e.g., friends, likes, searches, exposure, analog movements)
  • Content and context (e.g., ads watched, algorithmically inferred interests)

How is data from DDPs different?

Compared to APIs (Ohme et al. 2024)…

  • Control & informed consent of users
  • Longitudinal data without “rate limits”
  • Partly additional measurements (e.g., exposure data; non-public data)

👉 but can be burdensome for participants!

Survey Request & Download Data Extract Data Inspect Data Consent

🤔 How easy (or hard) did you find it to request your data? Did you encounter any obstacles?

Survey

Survey start page

Request & Download Data

Different degrees in standardization for data requests (Hase et al. 2024)…

  • Verification procedure
  • Specification of data (metrics, observation period)
  • Notification on provision of DDP
  • Duration of DDP availability

Request manual for LinkedIn on computer

Request manual for Instagram on computer

Extract Data

Inspect Data

Data overview on data donation platform

Data donation

📢 Task: Try it yourself.

You might have already requested and downloaded your data in preparation for today.

Did you encounter any difficulties in sharing your data?

🤔 Questions?

References

Hase, Valerie, Jef Ausloos, Laura Boeschoten, Nico Pfiffner, Heleen Janssen, Theo Araujo, Thijs Carrière, et al. 2024. “Fulfilling Data Access Obligations: How Could (and Should) Platforms Facilitate Data Donation Studies?” Internet Policy Review 13 (3). https://doi.org/10.14763/2024.3.1793.
Ohme, Jakob, Theo Araujo, Laura Boeschoten, Deen Freelon, Nilam Ram, Byron B. Reeves, and Thomas N. Robinson. 2024. “Digital Trace Data Collection for Social Media Effects Research: APIs, Data Donation, and (Screen) Tracking.” Communication Methods and Measures 18 (2): 124–41. https://doi.org/10.1080/19312458.2023.2181319.